Marital adjustment, convergent communication patterns, and psychological distress in women with early and late marriage
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Marital adjustment, convergent communication patterns, and psychological distress in women with early and late marriage Shawal Shaud 1 & Sara Asad 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Early marriage among women is prevalent in Pakistan and is linked with a number of negative health outcomes. This study aimed to determine significant differences in marital adjustment, convergent communication patterns, and psychological distress in Pakistani women with early and late marriages. Further, it investigated the predictors of psychological distress in married women of Pakistan. Cross sectional design was used to select the sample of 100 women (50 with early marriage; 50 with late marriage) from Lahore, Pakistan. Marital Adjustment test (Locke & Wallace Marriage and Family Living, 21(3), 251–255, 1959), The Convergence Communication scale (Miller-Day & Jackson Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 29(8), 1036-1057, 2012) and Kessler Psychological Distress Scale- K10 (Kessler et al. Psychological Medicine, 32(6), 959-976, 2002) were administered. Results revealed that women with late marriages had higher marital adjustment, whereas, women with early marriages showed higher psychological distress. Regression analysis indicated low marital adjustment and interpersonal deference communication style as significant predictors of psychological distress in married women. The findings of this study may help service providers to recognize the impact of early and late marriage on women’s psychological health. Keywords Marital adjustment . Psychological distress . Communication patterns . Early marriage
Introduction Marriage, for many people, is the most enduring and intimate bond of all close relationships. The fact that marriage has farreaching positive effects on one’s emotional and physical well-being is widely documented (Carr and Springer 2010). However, researchers (Proulx et al. 2007) have conditioned positive effects of marriage upon the quality of marriage, where high quality marriages amplify psychological functioning and problematic marriages can take a toll on one’s emotional and psychological health. One of the many aspects that can affect quality of marriage, and subsequently psychological functioning, is timing of matrimony. Global statistics indicated that more than 700 million * Sara Asad [email protected] Shawal Shaud [email protected] 1
Department of Applied Psychology, Kinnaird College for Women, 93 Jail Road, Lahore, Pakistan
girls were married before age 18 and prevalence of early marriage among girls was highest in South Asia (Klugman et al. 2014; UNICEF 2014). Early marriage is having a child married under the age of 18 and is considered a violation of human rights. In Pakistan 21% girls are wedded before the age of 18 as per the findings of a recent survey (UNICEF 2016). Although marriage is legal in Pakistan for girls who are as young as 16 years old, research findings (Nasrullah and Bhatti 2012; Prakash et al. 2011; Walker 2012) have do
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